THE BIG IDEAS The Self Health Revolution

You Are What You Eat

So, what are you eating? BY J. MICHAEL ZENN · THE ONE REVOLUTION © 2011 · 184 PAGES

Simple Solutions
Quit peeing in your gas tank.

The Protein Myth

You don’t need that much, yo. “That’s why I wrote this book—to help myself and to help you. I want to share
with you what I’ve learned. I want to share how a few simple decisions and steps—
Eat Like a Poor Person
And stay healthy. actually only three—can change your life. You’ll be able to experience a personal
The Big Fat Lie Self Health Revolution! You’ll wake up energized, lose more weight, improve your
Don’t fall for it. indigestion, have better bathroom experiences, get rid of many aches and pains,
Smoking & Happiness equip your body to fight off seasonal and chronic/fatal illness, sleep more deeply
You negative? Quit the habit! and soundly, increase sexual desire (some readers may not need this) and enjoy
Stomp Your ANTs life like you’ve never enjoyed it before. Many people don’t know what they could be
Get on that.
missing because they do not know how good it could be—how good life and health
The Real Purple Pill are truly meant to be.”
Start poppin’ the “pills.”
~ J. Michael Zenn from The Self Health Revolution

J. Michael Zenn’s The Self Health Revolution is a great little book written in a super down-to-
earth and funny style by a guy who describes himself as just “an ordinary guy who discovered
an extraordinary secret” that he now feels compelled to share with the average, ordinary people
everywhere.

I first heard about this book when I saw it on John Mackey’s (co-CEO of Whole Foods)
recommended reading list. John gives the book a glowing endorsement and it might be the
*perfect* introduction to the world of plant-based nutrition if you’ve been looking for a fun book
to get you pointed in the right direction! (Or if you’ve been looking for a fun book to share with
your friends/family.)
“He who does not know It’s packed with Big Ideas.
food, cannot understand
For now, let’s have some fun with a handful of my favorites!
the diseases of man. Let
your food be your medicine
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!
and your medicine be your
food.” “The bottom line with food is this—your Grandmom was right! “You are what you eat.” In fact,
scientists can take fat from your belly, your hips, or your backside, put it under a microscope and
~ Hippocrates
tell exactly where your fat came from. They know whether the fat is formed from eating fat from
a cow, a pig, lamb, or chicken. Food goes from your lips to your hips and you become exactly
what you eat, and as you now know, we are what we eat, eats too (read again more slowly)...

If you’re eating foods raised in poor soils, bombarded with pesticides, fungicides, preservatives,
processed, refined, and depleted of nutrients, then that is what your body is going to be made
of, simple as that. If you are eating obese, concentration camp animals that have been weaned
on cow’s blood, injected with female hormones, medicated with antibiotics, and fed genetically
engineered corn, soybean and cotton seeds, laced with slaughterhouse feces and waste and fed
their own animal fats, then that is what you will carry around with you in your gut, around your
waist, and on your backside. It will all be there with you and it will surely have an effect on your
Self Health.”

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 Well that makes it pretty clear, eh? :)

We are what we eat.

“According to the January
What are you eating?
2010 Journal for Pediatric
Nursing, this generation of (And isn’t that creepy amazing that you can literally take fat from your butt and know what
children may be the first animal/food you ate that put it there?)

to have a life expectancy as

much as 10 years shorter SIMPLE SOLUTIONS & PEEING IN YOUR GAS TANK
than that of their parents.” “Almost all illness and disease comes from two things: Malnutrition (fake food) and toxins
~ J. Michael Zenn (poisons). When the 100 trillion cells of your body are being fed living food, clean water and
powerful nutrients, they can function at a level that wards off attacks from all bugs, bacteria and
viruses. They simply cannot be defeated. But when the body is fed fake food, depleted of real
nutrients and loaded with poisons, it will fight hard, but eventually fail. As I have said before, the
greatest testimony to the genius of the human body is its ability to survive the onslaught of fake
food we feed it.

I know, some people may be thinking, “This is just too simple, I was looking for a much more
complex solution. How could a problem so large have such a simple solution?” Would you be
surprised if your car didn’t run well after you peed in your gas tank? Or what if I put sawdust in
your oil? Better yet, what if I shoved mud up your tailpipe? Would you be shocked if your car
didn’t crank after such abuse? Our bodies are much more complex and sensitive than our cars.”

Alright.

“We put drugs of which Part 1: The two causes of disease: malnutrition (via fake food) and toxins (via poisons). Remove
we know little, into bodies, those and you give your body a chance to fight off all the various challenges.
of which we know less, to Keep eating fake food—you know, the stuff that comes in boxes with items on the label you can’t
cure diseases of which we pronounce!—and you’re bound to keep on getting sick.
know nothing at all.”
Part 2. The solution is REALLY simple.
~ Voltaire
We like to get all geeked up getting into the latest and greatest most complex solution out there
(whether it’s a particular diet or going in for open heart surgery) but the solution is simple: Eat
more plant-based whole foods.

Part 3. That whole “peeing in your gas tank” line is pretty funny. Let’s quit doing that.

THE PROTEIN MYTH (AGAIN)

“The average American eats over 200 lbs. of meat every year. I grew up thinking I had not eaten
a meal unless I consumed a pretty big piece of meat. If you were raised like me, you might think
eating a lot of meat and dairy (proteins) is absolutely necessary for strong bones and muscles. If
you do even a little bit of research, you will quickly discover that this is just not true. Think about
it, the biggest animals—gorillas, elephants, rhinos, hippos—all eat predominantly fruits and
vegetables. Where did they get the protein to make their muscles so big? Fruits and vegetables
are some of the most powerful protein-rich foods found anywhere.

All protein is derived from sunlight shining down on plants. Plants absorb the sun’s energy
and turn it into protein. The cow didn’t eat another cow to get its muscles—unless it’s from a
concentration camp—the cow ate grass. Which food do you think has more protein? A serving of
100 calories of sirloin steak or 100 calories of broccoli? If you chose steak you would be wrong.
Broccoli has twice as much protein as sirloin steak. What do you think has more calcium, milk or
turnip greens? You probably can guess by now—yes, it’s the turnip greens. Nevertheless, because
we have been programmed to consume big meat portions with very few fruits and vegetables—
that’s how most Americans eat these days. Could this be the reason we are getting so sick?”

2 PhilosophersNotes | The Self Health Revolution

 We talk about this a LOT.

“External objects are never The myth that you need to eat an animal (or drink its milk) to get enough protein.
causes of disease, merely
It’s absurd.
agents waiting to cause
specific symptoms in Fact is, the strongest and biggest animals on the planet didn’t need to eat other animals to build
their muscles. They ate plants. And so should we.
susceptible hosts. Rather
than warring with diseases In his great book The Engine 2 Diet (see Notes), Rip Esselstyn debunks a number of myths. The
with the hope of eliminating #1 myth he goes after? “Myth 1: You can’t get enough protein eating a plant-based diet.”
them, we ought to worry Here’s his response to that myth: “Reality: Not only will get all the protein you need, for the
more about strengthening first time in your life, you won’t suffer from an excess of it. Ample amounts of protein are
[the body’s] resistance to thriving in whole, natural plant-based foods. For example, spinach is 51 percent protein;
them.” mushrooms, 35 percent; beans, 26 percent; oatmeal, 16 percent; whole wheat pasta, 15
~ Dr. Andrew Weil percent; corn, 12 percent; and potatoes, 11 percent.

What’s more, our body needs less protein than you may think. According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), the average 150-pound male requires only 22.5 grams of protein daily
based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. (WHO recommends pregnant women get 6 percent of
calories from protein.) Other nutritional organizations recommend as little as 2.5 percent of
daily calories come from protein while the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board’s recommended
daily allowance is 6 percent after a built-in safety margin; most American’s however, are
taking in 20 percent or more.

Doctors from my father to Dean Ornish to Joel Fuhrman, author of Eat to Live: The
Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, all suggest that getting an
adequate amount of protein should be the least of your worries.”

P.S. Here’s a funny cartoon that my friend Jon Hinds uses as his profile pic. (Jon is the founder
of Monkey Bar Gyms (a plant-based, eco-conscious counterpoint to CrossFit gyms) and is easily
THE strongest guy I know.)

“All truth passes through

three stages. First, it is
ridiculed. Second, it is
violently opposed. Third, it
is accepted as being self-
evident.” You still clinging to the idea that we need to eat animals in order to get enough protein?
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
PLEASE let it go. It’s killing you and your family. Seriously.

EAT LIKE A POOR PERSON

“In their ground-breaking book, The China Study, called the Grand Prix of all studies of its
kind by the New York Times, Tom and Colin Campbell discovered that when people ate a

PhilosophersNotes | The Self Health Revolution 3

 diet of primarily meat and process food, their incident of cancer and chronic illness increased
“The rest of the world lives
dramatically, but when they ate a diet of primarily plant foods (living foods) with minimal meat
to eat. I eat to live.” and processed foods (dead foods), cancer and chronic illness rates fell and in many cases were
~ Socrates virtually non-existent. Poorer countries, which invariably eat few animal products, have less
than 5% of their population dying of heart attacks. The China Study proves that populations that
eat a lifelong diet of mostly plant foods have almost no cancer, heart attacks and heart disease. If
this is true, that would mean that cancer, heart disease and chronic illness are fruit and vegetable
deficiency diseases. Get these living foods in your body and you may not have to worry about
dying of one of these dire diseases.”

Check out the Note on The China Study for more goodness on that.

And, check out this graph from Joel Fuhrman’s blog that Zenn has in the book on the
relationship between heart disease and cancer and the % of calories from unrefined plant foods.

Zenn tells us: “As you can see from this study taken from Joel Fuhrman’s insightful book, Eat
to Live, populations all over the world who get 75% of their diet from fruits and vegetables
invariably have a much lower rate of killer diseases like cancer and heart disease. The data is
undeniable.”

In sum: Eat less refined foods and animal products and more whole, plant-based foods.

(Yes, I’m repeating myself. It’s deliberate. :)

BEWARE OF THE BIG FAT LIE

“Labels lie. You know the so-called low fat 2 percent milk? Well, it’s actually not 2 percent fat
at all. Thirty-five percent of its calories come from fat (Worse, it’s only 20-30 calories less than
whole milk!). They call it “98% fat free” because they measure it by its weight which includes
the water content that contains no real calories at all. It’s like taking a teaspoon of melted butter
which is 100% fat and mixing it in a glass of hot water, then labeling the glass of melted fat-water
as being “98% fat free.” The truth is, water has no calories and if I were to drink that glass, 100%
of the calories would all come from fat. They deceive millions of Americans by playing this trick
on us with milk, cheese, beef, chicken, and other products. Don’t believe their big fat lie!”

Did you know that’s how they arrived at “low fat” 2% milk?

Eek.

That’s officially uncool.

Unfortunately, it’s not particularly rare as a lot of businesses are more interested in maximizing
their profits rather than optimizing our lives.

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 “It is a scientific fact that
people who are happy get SMOKING & HAPPINESS
sick less, recover faster, “What do you think would lower your life expectancy more—smoking or unhappiness? Would
accomplish more and live you believe they both harm you equally? They both shorten your life by roughly ten years.
much longer. Happiness of According to recent studies, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day has the same effect on how
the heart by any measure is long you will live as having a negative view on life. Wow! That’s powerful. If that’s the case, we
necessary for Self Health.” should demand public awareness campaigns on human unhappiness (like anti-smoking ads).”

~ J. Michael Zenn That’s a pretty powerful stat.

Both smoking 2 packs a day and living with a negative view on life will shorten your life by ten
years.

Yikes.

Time to kick the pessimism habit, eh?!

Here’s an idea on how to do that:

STOMP YOUR ANTS

“Dr. Daniel G. Amen, a psychiatrist, calls these limiting inner thoughts ANTs (Automatic
Negative Thoughts) and just like ants at a picnic (or in your pants), these ANTs can ruin your
day and your life. Dr. Amen says we should learn to stomp our ANTs by becoming aware that
they exist, shaking them off and squashing them by challenging them, and then replacing them
with more positive and affirming thoughts. We must realize we are in control of our thoughts.
Whether we will listen or agree with our inner voice or not is clearly within our power. Ask
yourself: Is this belief hurting or helping me? Is it getting me closer to what I want or further
away? Is it empowering me to take action or freezing me with fear and self-doubt?”

Automatic Negative Thoughts.

ANTs.

We can’t have ANTs in our pants (or our heads) if we want to optimize our lives!

We talked about ANTs in our Note on Marci Shimoff’s great book Happy for No Reason where
she tells us: “Our minds—made up of our thoughts, beliefs, and self-talk—are always ‘on.’
According to scientists, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. That’s one thought per second
during every waking hour. No wonder we’re so tired at the end of the day!

And what’s even more startling is that of those 60,000 thoughts, 95 percent are the same
thoughts you had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Your mind is like
a record player playing the same record over and over again... Talk about being stuck in a
“Gratitude is not only the rut...Still, that wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the next statistic: for the average person, 80
greatest of virtues, but the percent of those habitual thoughts are negative. That means that every day most people have
parent of all the others.” more than 45,000 negative thoughts... Dr. Daniel Amen, a world-renowned psychiatrist and
brain imaging specialist, calls them automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs.”
~ Cicero
Yowsers.

60,000 thoughts per day = one thought per second per waking hour. (That’s a lot.)

95% of those are the same thoughts you had yesterday. (That’s not so good.)

80% of THOSE thoughts (or 45,000!! per day) are negative. (That’s really not so good.)

How do we stomp the ANTs?

As Zenn advises, first we need to realize we CAN stomp them.

PhilosophersNotes | The Self Health Revolution 5

 We’re in control of what thoughts we allow to dominate our minds. It might not feel like that all
“People change when the
the time, but we are.
pain of staying the same
outweighs the pain of Once we assume that control, it’s time to stomp those pesky ANTs with any one of the dozens of
changing.” tactics we chat about throughout these Notes!

~ J. Michael Zenn
THE REAL PURPLE PILL
“If I told you there was a little purple pill proven to reduce your risk of cancer by a whopping
41% (cutting your risk of cancer almost in half), would you take it? How much would you be
willing to pay for it? Would you want to share this pill with everyone you love and care about?

According to the Journal of National Cancer Institute, there is such a pill. They confirm that
men who ate three servings of vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) a week had a 41% reduced
risk of prostate cancer than those who didn’t. There’s your pill—and you don’t even have to visit
(or pay) your doctor or your pharmacist. I could literally spend the rest of this book quoting you
study after study showing how fruits and vegetables ward off all kinds of diseases and illnesses.”

Imagine a pill that could reliably reduce your risk of cancer by 41%.

Seriously. Think about it. Imagine a pill that made it HALF as likely that you’d get CANCER!! If
that pill existed you’d see it advertised on EVERY SINGLE SHOW you ever watched and would
make *BILLIONS* of dollars.

Alas, that pill does exist. It’s called (cruciferous) veggies.

So get to poppin’ those “pills” and let’s rock the self health revolution! :)

Brian Johnson,
Chief Philosopher

If you liked this Note, About the Author of “The Self Health Revolution”
you’ll probably like… J. MICHAEL ZENN

The China Study

J. Michael Zenn is an ordinary guy who discovered an extraordinary secret that
Eat to Live he now feels compelled to share with the average, ordinary people everywhere.
Super Immunity Learn more at www.selfhealthrevolution.com.

The Engine 2 Diet

How to Prevent and
Reverse Heart Disease About the Author of This Note
BRIAN JOHNSON

Brian Johnson is a lover of wisdom (aka a “Philosopher”) and a passionate

student of life who’s committed to inspiring and empowering millions of people
to live their greatest lives as he studies, embodies and shares the universal truths
of optimal living. He harts his job.

6 PhilosophersNotes | The Self Health Revolution